Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President John Williams told cable news channel CNBC that he still expects the first central bank increase in short-term interest rates will come around a year down the road.

“A rate hike some time in the middle of 2015 seems reasonable” right now based on the current outlook for the economy, Mr. Williams said in the interview Thursday, echoing comments he’s made in recent public remarks.

But he also said central bank policy will “depend on how the economy is doing.” If the economy performs better than central bankers now expect, it could bring forward the timing of the Fed’s first move to increase interest rates from their current near zero percent level, the official noted.

Mr. Williams was interviewed by the cable channel on the sidelines of the Kansas City Fed‘s annual research conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo. This event is one of the central bank’s highest profile gatherings, and it will include speeches on Friday by Fed Chief Janet Yellen, as well as European Central Bank boss Mario Draghi. The Kansas City Fed’s conference is devoted to labor market issues. But the speeches will be closely watched for clues about the outlook for monetary policy in the world’s leading economies.

Mr. William’s view that the Fed still has time before raising interest rates stands in contrast with the event’s host, Kansas City Fed leader Esther George. She said in a Fox Business Network interview earlier in the day that she’d like to see the Fed consider increasing interest rates pretty soon.

“My objective is not to see rates rise sharply,” Ms. George said in an interview on Fox Business Network. “But I do think many of the policy benchmarks we look at are already signaling that we should be off of 0 percent,” she said, explaining the central bank should end its easy money policies “sooner rather than later…so that the economy has time to adjust to moving off of negative real interest rates.”

Ms. George has been one of the central bank’s most steadfast opponents of its current easy money policy stance. Her views jibe with some of the regional Fed presidents. But Mr. Williams, who is a close ally of Ms. Yellen, has long held views closer to what most of the members of the monetary-policy setting Federal Open Market Committee believe.

Most central bank officials currently expect that the first increase in the central bank’s near zero percent short-term rate policy will happen some time next year. But meeting minutes for the Fed’s July policy gathering released Wednesday revealed that robust labor market gains are causing officials to mull whether or not they need to boost rates sooner than they currently project.

Like Mr. Williams said in the interview, a number of Fed officials have driven home the point that monetary policy is not on a set course and will be driven by how the economy performs. In his interview, Mr. Williams was upbeat about the economy’s outlook. But he said that workers leaving the labor force and relatively low productivity have bumped the economy’s potential growth rate down to around 2%. He sees little threat from rising inflation in large part because there are no real signs the pick up in the job market are driving up wages in a significant fashion.

Mr. Williams also said that when the Fed does increase short-term rates, it will likely do so gradually, in a view that was shared by Ms. George in her interview.

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